Mass diabetes screening questioned

Mass screening of high-risk patients for type 2 diabetes in general practice would have no impact on mortality rates, according to a major new GP-led study.

The findings, published in The Lancet, found that screening high-risk patients aged 40 to 69 years had no significant impact on all-cause death rates over 10 years’ follow-up.

The study comes after NICE this year recommended blood glucose checks in all high-risk patients aged 40 to 74 years, in order to identify those with diabetes or ‘pre-diabetes’.

Study leader Dr Simon Griffin, a GP in Cambridge, said the new research suggested screening alone was ‘not the answer’ to reducing the burden of diabetes.

His study – the first to evaluate the effect of type 2 diabetes screening on overall mortality – found a non-significant 2% reduction in all-cause mortality and no reduction in diabetes- or CVD-related mortality.

The controlled trial looked at 20,184 patients within the top quartile of risk for undiagnosed diabetes.

Researchers using a validated score allocated the practices to three groups: a blood glucose test followed by intensive treatment for those with diabetes; the same screening programme followed by routine diabetes care; and finally a control group where no screening took place.

Dr Griffin, assistant director of the MRC epidemiology unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, said his study supported more targeted screening: ‘It would be more efficient to assess risk in a sub-group at higher risk, identified using scores, questionnaires or simply an age threshold higher than 40 years.’

Dr Martin Hadley-Brown, chair of the Primary Care Diabetes Society and a GP in Thetford, Norfolk, said the 10-year follow-up may have been too short to detect any mortality benefit.